


The gravity of duties, the groundspeed of joy

by leiascully



Series: Nights On New Caprica [1]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-21
Updated: 2008-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's a hell of a thing, to find the promised land and go back into the desert," he said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The gravity of duties, the groundspeed of joy

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 3.09 "Unfinished Business"  
> A/N: Title is from Ani DiFranco's "School Night". For [**angiescully**](http://angiescully.livejournal.com/), who knew I would write them before I did and is my favorite enabler, and for [**coffeesuperhero**](http://coffeesuperhero.livejournal.com/), who will get back her privileges when she learns not to copy/paste, and for [**swatkat24**](http://swatkat24.livejournal.com/), who said, "Lee/Kara? Get to the good stuff!"   
> Disclaimer: _Battlestar Galactica_ and all related characters belong to Ronald Moore, NBC Universal, Sci-Fi Channel, and Sky One. No infringement is intended and no profit is made from this.

"Curtains," Laura said.

"Hmm?"

"I'll have curtains. At my cabin. Someday, when there's fabric to spare." Her fingers pleated his uniform where it was bunching up and then smoothed it out again.

"Grand aspirations," he said.

"Hey," she said, poking his chest, "I used to be somebody."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," he said, and took a drag off the cigarettes she'd rolled. Deft pretty hands she had, too. More than once he'd woken up in a sweat at the thought of those hands. Now here she was with her fingers splayed across his ribs and her hair tickling his neck. "You're still somebody. You're with the Admiral."

"Hmph. Don't forget who gave you those wings, Admiral," she scolded.

"If I were a schoolchild, I would cower before you," he said lazily. "I'm glad you left your ruler on the ship."

She slapped at him and he chuckled. After a moment she gave in and laughed softly. Adama took a long last drag off his cigarette and flicked the end carefully away into the sand. He held the smoke in for a minute, exhaling slowly, feeling happiness and warmth spread through him. A smile slid across his face, slow and deliberate like moving in zero gee. Laura nestled deeper into his shoulder, making a little humming noise.

It had taken a Cylon invasion and the near-annihilation of the human race to get here to this gods-forsaken dustball, but at this moment, with the sweet heavy smoke wrapped around his brain and Laura curled against him, he couldn't muster the energy to regret it. He wanted her, by the gods. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her, bury his hands in her hair, run his fingers down her back to make her shiver, but the smoke took the urgency out of it. It was a lazy, satiating desire. It was good enough. They had all the time in this world.

"You know," she said, "in a way it's good, not to be anybody." Her vowels were pleasantly rounded in his ears. He enjoyed the changing shape of her lips as she formed the words. She was a clever woman: the sacks that she had found for pillows gave him an excellent vantage point on the details of her face. When she brought her cigarette to her lips, the line of her cheek and her throat and the shadow of her hair falling over her face made his mouth twitch with pleasure. She blew out smoke in a long stream and he was glad not to be so young anymore, to just watch her and enjoy her and want her without the need to grind them both into the sand. Peace had been a long time coming. He would take it while it lasted and have her as long as she was willing.

"Tell me more about your cabin," he said.

"Mmm," she said, and ground the end of her cigarette out, exhaling a last plume of smoke against his cheek. "Well. Have I mentioned that it's lakefront property? Because it is. Right on the lake. I can go out in the morning in my bathrobe and take my coffee and look at the water."

"The mosquitoes will love you," he said solemnly, thinking of her in a bathrobe with the morning sunlight on her skin. He sketched himself into the scene, coming up behind her, kissing her neck and wrapping his arms around her waist. Maybe sliding his hand under her robe. Maybe just enjoying the scenery. "You'll have a whole new constituency."

"I miss the people," she said, stroking his chest in an absent-minded way. His cheeks warmed. Her touch seemed to cover more of him than her hand could span; he felt her fingers everywhere.

"You still have the people," he said.

"Please. I tried to rig an election."

"They admire your gumption." He shifted a little to put her head more comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder. "Anything worth having is worth stealing."

She pursed her lips. "You wouldn't be offering me false comforts, would you, Bill?"

"I don't really seem like the type, do I?"

"No," she said, and smiled to herself. "No, you don't." She sighed, sounding pleased. "I'd almost forgotten about this."

"Forgotten what?"

She lifted her hand from his chest and gestured in the air. "Constellations. Humidity. Sand. Intoxication. Living."

"I'm sure we could have arranged for you to have some sand on Colonial One."

She tipped her head so that her chin was balanced on his shoulder, looking up at him. "I know the fleet is your life, Bill, but it was a little difficult for those of us who didn't expect to be on a ship for the rest of our lives."

"Even an admiral gets shore leave once in a while, when there's a shore to go to."

"True." Her fingers curled and settled on his chest again. "You'll have to come and visit me at my cabin."

"I don't know," he said, "are the bathrobes complimentary?"

She laughed, the sound rippling through the air until he had to laugh too, out of joy at her delight. The cool damp night air was sweet in his lungs and the smell of her shampoo was comforting and alluring all at once, clean and flowery. The sense of contentment was almost overwhelming. He breathed in deeply, trying to balance out the pressure of happiness. His arm was falling asleep where it was tucked under her, and he tried to shift it enough to get the blood flowing again, although it could have been her proximity or the cigarettes making his fingers tingle. After all, his whole body seemed to be tingling. He hadn't realized that her breasts were pressed against his arm, at least not on a conscious level. Or that if he'd been trying, he could have run his knuckles along her thighs. He'd been trying to think of her body as a muffle of fabric instead of skin and hair and heartbeat: she wasn't the President anymore, but she was still dangerous, a distraction. She had work to do here and he would be back on Galactica. This should be enough. This one day and night with her should be enough, the pleasure of her company without the complications of sex, but the longer he was near her, the more he longed for her. He moved his arm and wiggled his fingers briefly, settling back under the curve of her.

"Hmmm," she said, "I'd forgotten about that too."

"What's that?"

She leaned up on his chest, resting her head on her crossed arms, his hand pressed into her belly. She shifted her hips against his wrist, subtly. He flexed his fingers by reflex and she pursed her lips into her trademark enigmatic smile. "We do dance around each other, don't we?"

He pursed his lips. "It seems safer that way."

"Life is _short_, Bill," she said, in that passionate, practical way he adored, and she leaned forward and kissed him. It had been so long since a woman had touched him; under her live, warm weight, he felt the thrill of his blood stirring. His hands rose up to cradle her face. She melted into him and he wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or the drug or how long he'd been waiting for her that made it feel as if her body was an extension of his own. Her lips were hot and smoke-flavored and a little dry until the tip of her tongue brushed his, which was enough to set off a sweet, intense ache in his bones. His fingers knotted in her hair of their own accord and he pulled her closer. She hummed and balanced herself over his chest. He could feel her breath on his cheek and her breasts pressed against his ribs and her hips sliding until she was lying with her thigh hooked over his.

"You're sure about this?" he murmured, almost regretting the words.

"Gods, don't tell me you'll only kiss me when I'm actively dying?" she said, her lips brushing his ear.

"No," he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her, his other hand sliding possessively down her back. This time her mouth was more demanding than sweet: she had never been shy about the things she had wanted. He was glad to give in. She was fabric under his palms, but he could sense the skin underneath, and the muscles and bones under that, the visceral reality of her. He had forgotten sometimes in their meeting of the minds that she was a woman, that she would feel that way against him that women felt, a stunning variation on an eternal theme.

"Laura," he said, just to feel her name in his mouth, even if the sound was muffled against her lips. She made a noise of query in response, a vibration he felt all through him, and pulled back, resting on his chest, watching him. Her eyes were shadowed and serious. He felt the thrum of his blood rushing in his ears. His body warmed and quickened under hers. He had thought desire was a thing he had banished, but here she was, bringing him back into a world he'd forgotten all those years inside the steel hull of Galactica with the burdens of his people on his shoulders and no one to share the lean comforts of his bunk. He watched her watch him, fascinated by the flicker of thoughts and emotions across her face and the way that her rich inner life was telegraphed by the smallest twitch of cheek and eye. Her hair fell in waves across her forehead and cheeks and curled softly against her neck; the way she was leaning on him mounded her breasts generously over the lacy rim of her blouse. She lay very still on top of him, as if she weren't aware of the shifting tensions between them.

"Some things are just true," she said at last.

He ran the tips of his fingers over her cheek; she turned into his touch but kept her eyes open. "It's been a long time," he said.

"I have faith," she said, and there was that smile again. Luminous. That was the word for her. She had a light inside her, and it illuminated all his shadows. But she was still here, and if they had failures and secrets enough between them for an entire crew, they had their triumphs too. He stroked her neck and her smile grew broader. "You know," she said, her words precise and careful, "the truly unfortunate thing about these uniforms is that they have so many buttons."

"It tends to delay the inevitable among the crew," he said. "Anyway, you were always smarter than I am." He pulled at the end of her wrap and it came unknotted, slipping off her pale shoulders. He pushed the edges further down her arms, reveling in the smoothness of her skin. She sat up and shook the thing off, laying it over the sacks under their heads, and began to undo the buttons of his uniform one by one, her eyes locked with his and the smile still ghosting around her lips.

"Laura, you know you didn't have to get me drunk?" he asked suddenly, catching at her hand.

She squeezed his fingers. "I know. But it was fun, wasn't it? Pretending to be young and reckless."

He laughed and rolled on his side to kiss her. She slid her hands under his jacket and rested her fingertips on the waistband of his trousers; he ran his hand over her ass as she nipped playfully at his mouth and undid his buttons so slowly he could hardly bear it, anticipating her touch. He was hard for her, had been half-hard for hours under the influence of her laughter and the cigarettes, and she had known. When she paused, biting her lip with a teasing grin, he blew out a long breath and reached for her skirt, rucking the fabric up her calf until he could touch the skin of her thigh. He ran his fingers lightly up the back of her leg until her eyes narrowed with pleasure, and then stopped, his hand cupped over the place where leg swelled into hip.

"Turnabout is fair play," he reminded her.

"Just savoring the moment," she said, and warmth rose up in him, a torrent of impressions he could never express and hadn't thought he'd feel again. His mind was muddled with thoughts and emotion and liquor: she was the only clear thing.

"Not changing your mind, are you?" he teased.

Her grin got a wicked twist he'd hardly ever seen before. "I stole this moment fair and square from the gods and I'm going to make the most of it," she said. "With you." She kissed him again before he could say anything else, her fingers finding their way under his clothing. She untucked his undershirt with precise little movements and worked him out of his jacket by careful inches without ever breaking the kiss; his fingers felt large and clumsy in comparison, but she wriggled her hips eagerly as he worked her out of her skirt and underthings. He sat up, shrugging off his jacket, and picked up one of her bare feet. He kissed her toe, the perfect arch of her foot, the bone of her ankle. She sighed and hummed as he worked his way up her calf to her knee and then her thigh. He kissed the bone of her hip, nuzzled across her belly, and kissed back down the other leg, mapping each freckle against the promise of empty nights without her. Here on the inside of her thigh, a tiny mole. There, barely visible in the creases of her knee, a pearly line of scar tissue. He squeezed the shapely muscle of her calf gently and looked up. She was watching him, her eyes intense and her lips pursed.

"That really is astoundingly alluring," she said.

"I'm just getting started." He dragged his lips up her leg, pausing this time to plant a kiss above the curls at the juncture of her thighs, and peeled her shirt slowly up, kissing each successive inch of skin as it appeared. He was surprised he still remembered how to undo a bra; she sat up to help him and he looped his arm around her back, holding her there as he kneeled next to her, his cheek pressed against her hair. He just breathed her in for a moment and she began to slowly rub his back, resettling her chin between the bones of his shoulder with a little sigh.

"You know," she said somewhere behind his ear, "even if this doesn't go any further, it's still one of the best days I can remember."

He leaned back and looked at her. "Are you joking? Pass up the chance to seduce the most authoritative woman in the Twelve Colonies? That's my chance to be somebody. I was just savoring the moment, the way I was taught."

She crinkled her nose at him and giggled. "Flatterer."

He stroked her hair away from her face. In the moonlight, the tumble of her curls was magnificent. The lines around her eyes smoothed out at his touch. "In all seriousness, Laura, I didn't recast my ballot just because Baltar won. You'll always have your people."

She tipped her head to the side, smiling in that way she had that crimped secrets into the corners of her mouth. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Kiss me now, please," she said, holding up her face with a little jerk of her chin.

"I was never one to ignore an executive order," he said.

"Liar," she drawled, and she was smiling when he kissed her. Her fingers crept down his back and pulled at his shirt, and he gave himself over to his hunger for her and let her peel off his layers: shirt, trousers, their underthings lying together in a heap in the sand until they were down to bare skin, and gods, if he'd thought he could feel her touch everywhere before, it had been nothing compared to this. It was the difference between the curve he could see on the horizon and the curve of the planet the first time he'd seen it from space, orders of magnitude of wonder. He eased her back down onto the makeshift pallet, nuzzling between her breasts, and her hands were all over him, caressing and nudging and kneading delicately. She smelled and tasted exquisite, enough nuance for six women.

She pushed him onto his side. His hand in the small of her back pressed her hips into his, and she was laughing and moving against him. She slid her hand between them, wrapping her fingers around his prick, and he groaned a little. She kissed him, quick and hungry, still laughing, and drew her palm up his shaft. Burning with his need for her, he hooked a hand under her thigh and pulled her leg over his hip, and she shifted to accommodate him, guiding him in. They both drew in a long breath, and then their eyes locked and she broke into giggles again. He moved slowly against her and her laughter turned into a moan as she bit her lip. She was slick and close, a safe place to anchor, and he took his time, gauging her pleasure by the way her eyes narrowed and the pitch of her whimpers.

"Talk to me, Laura," he whispered. He was lost in sensation, dissolving in the heat of her.

"Doing just fine," she whispered back, shifting her hips with a gratified sigh. He slid his hand down her ribs and over her belly, searching with his fingertips until he found the place that made her gasp. "You know, any casual observer would think" - her voice rose half an octave - "that you had a lot of experience in this area."

"Done a lot of theoretical work," he said. He was coming closer to the edge; it was difficult to put the words together. He distracted himself by concentrating on the details of her. The arch of one eyebrow as he moved in her. The flex of her fingers against his back. The faint suction between their damp skins as they tried to spare their stiff joints and revive the tingling arms trapped under them.

"Glad," she said, moving faster, "glad to hear it." He rolled his fingers over her tender places and her arm tightened across his back. Her breath came faster, rougher in her throat, and her breasts heaved against his chest. He kissed her hard, sucking at her bottom lip, rocking into her, desperate to hear her reach her release. He was half on top of her, cradling her in his arms. His shoulders trembled with the effort of holding himself above her. Most times he forgot she was a small woman: her force of will was all out of proportion to the reality of her size, but the delicacy of her frame under his bulk was unmistakable, and he wasn't too far gone to be careful of her. She was rising under him, setting her own rhythm, and the feel of her was incredible: there was nothing to do but surrender. Her back arched and she gasped, a kind of stuttering sweet noise, and shivered around him. The sensation of her release urged him on and he forgot that she was small and slight in his overwhelming need to bury himself in her, to make her a part of him. His body tightened like the first time he'd lifted off in a Viper. He was slipping over her, he was going to fall, but she was holding him up, whispering to him, and he let go with a groan, still braced up on his shaking arms by some miracle and her clinging to him, shaking too. He took a half-breath that caught in his throat, took another, kept breathing.

She pulled his head down and kissed him, hungrily at first, but the desperation easing from her touch. He kissed her back, letting his joints unlock, collapsing next to her in increments as the blood whirled through his brain. Finally on the ground beside her, he sprawled on his back, huffing and puffing. It took a long minute for the dazzle of the starry sky to resolve itself into points of light again. He closed his eyes and listened to her contented little murmurs and the thrum of his own pulse. His mouth was dry. He swallowed, his thoughts coming back into focus. It had been years since he'd done anything like this. She was the most complicated woman in the fleet, and the most dangerous, and the most fascinating, and all of his efforts to avoid considering this possibility had been for nothing. The part that terrified him was that he almost didn't care. She wasn't the President, for the time being, which meant less conflict of interest for the fleet. She wasn't going to keep him from Galactica. They understood each other.

If he was going to be honest, he would have missed her anyway, without this, before this. Before her skin and her eyes and her laughter and the embrace of her body. But gods, it didn't help.

"Don't leave me now," she chided gently, pulling her wrap over them. She was propped up on one elbow, leaning over him.

"I'm right here," he said, sliding his arm around her damp ribs.

"Don't evade me, Bill Adama," she said, looking into his eyes. The moonlight made her pupils huge and her skin pale as snow, what he could remember of snow. "What are you running from?"

"Just like Kara," he said. "Afraid of happiness."

She brushed a lock of hair off his forehead and smiled. "Don't be."

"Easier said than done."

"Life's a bitch," she said simply.

He kissed her shoulder. "I think I've heard that from you before."

"You and I are old enough to know better," she said. "A wise man once told me that you have to have something to live for."

He took a few breaths, the cool breeze mingled now with warm air rising off their skin and the softly musky smell of sweat. "Gods, part of me wishes you had just stolen that election."

"That's not protocol, Admiral." She was teasing him. "Even if I had, there's no guarantee that I wouldn't be down here and you up there."

"At least you would have taken longer to think about it," he grumbled.

"Yes," she said, her eyes crinkling. "But Admiral, if I were the President, we wouldn't have had this luxury, would we?"

"It isn't protocol," he agreed, "but I like to think we would have gotten here eventually, when the work was done."

"Everybody has a promised land," she said, setting her face against his neck, and he had to close his eyes against the moon and the stars and her face, because it was too much. His skin wasn't big enough to contain what he felt about her, and he wasn't alone. The rocks loved her. The stars loved her. The earth under them that bore him up loved her: the curve of the ground was the planet reaching out to her. The universe was expanding to try to accommodate the wonder of her. He considered briefly how smoking made him maudlin, or maybe it was just that it freed him to truly consider her.

"It's a hell of a thing, to find the promised land and go back into the desert," he said.

"We knew what it would be," she reminded him, her eyelashes feathering his skin. "We made those choices long ago. It can never be enough, but it has to be. You wouldn't have it another way."

"Neither would you," he said. "Gods know why my promised land had to be the prophet."

She pressed her lips to his shoulder in a soft kiss; he could feel her smiling. "All of this has happened before," she murmured. "All of this will happen again."

"I can only hope," he said, and held her close.


End file.
